


Trajectory

by anneapocalypse



Series: Inroads [2]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: F/F, chorus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-24
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-14 21:34:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3426353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the midst of uncertainty there are moments you can see your path laid out before you, but even then there are choices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trajectory

**Author's Note:**

> This fic follows [Relative Peace](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2424836). Something will probably follow this!
> 
> Kimball's physical appearance is based on [this piece by misses-unicorn](http://misses-unicorn.tumblr.com/post/95942138964/i-just-want-kimball-to-kick-felix-into-that).

In the uncertainty of post-war Chorus, in the midst of peace talks and negotiations and the tenuous plans to move back to the capital and try and live together like civilized people, Carolina feels a certain inevitability approaching, like the rumble of a tank coming over the ground a long way off.

She is going to wind up in Vanessa Kimball's bed. It is a certainty.

 

Carolina has an instinct for these things. Not an exact science, but it’s the kind of instinct that used to get her laid without much effort anytime shore leave allowed. Walk into a club, make the circuit, and it didn’t usually take more than a couple of conversations before something clicked. Sometimes she’d drag the night out, take her sweet time, even when the person she intended to bang like a screen door was well within her sights (contingent on their interest, of course). Other times, though, she went right in for the kill.

Vanessa Kimball is not _the kill_. What Carolina feels is not the dark, heady, almost predatory feeling she gets in a dark flashy nightclub in her deadliest skyhigh fuck-me heels and her eyes lined in black. It’s not what it was with Maine, either, the exhilarating sync of movement and mind when they went head-to-head on the training floor, when they kicked the armor for a night and sparred hand-to-hand until they were both breathless and drenched in sweat, and pinned beneath her she saw the way his eyes widened with a look of wonder.

This isn’t that, and Carolina still hasn’t quite pinned it down but there’s a pull, a trajectory she can see like she can see her next three moves mapped out against an opponent, branching one way or another, hinging on possibility, but always arcing toward one final point: victory.

Or in this case: Vanessa’s bed.

 

Not that Kimball _has_ much of a bed, at the moment.

The New Republic is breaking camp at long last. Equipment and foodstuffs packed into supply crates, all the collapsable furnishings folded up and stowed. Trucks rumble up and down the narrow, treacherous dirt road into the canyon and park haphazardly between buildings, and all hands are on deck to haul and load.

The emotional climate is mixed, at once triumphant and apprehensive and frightened and even sad. Tears on some fronts, laughter on others. Sometimes both. Velasquez sobs openly as she helps Jensen gut the garage, and then she wipes her eyes, smearing her mascara, and laughs out loud, flinging her arms around the LT without warning. Jensen just hugs her back, seeming totally unsurprised.

Bitters and Palomo trade a steady stream of casual insults back and forth as they cram equipment crates into the back of a beat-up army truck that looks like it should’ve been decommissioned about five years ago. But there’s a friendly ease in the way Palomo tosses Bitters a tiedown as they tug the corners of a desert-drab tarp over the load, in the way Bitters snorts and rolls his eyes when Palomo laughs at his own jokes. Bitters climbs behind the wheel and Palomo takes shotgun without question, and there’s a sudden blast of music through the open windows before they rumble away over the uneven ground.

There is, Carolina's noticed, a real atmosphere of acceptance among these kids. They bicker and tease and fight, yeah, but there’s this openness about them. They storm with emotion, laughing and yelling and crying all over each other and just as quick they’re back at laughter again.

She mentioned that to Kimball at one point and KImball shrugged and said, _They’re family_ , like that was an answer. Like family meant you flung your heart open like that for everyone to see.

 

Carolina helps out in the barracks for a bit, collecting equipment and nudging along the young soldiers who linger around their stripped bunks with a look of conflicted nostalgia. It’s familiar. This is home to them, and even if it's a home born of war and oppression and horror, it's hard to leave a home.

She thinks of her high school graduation, all the packing up and crying and hugging in the dormitories as they all prepared to leave the 6-12 academy where they’d grown up. By the time she graduated she hadn’t been back to visit her childhood home in over two years. It was just easier to spend summers at school. And holidays. And everything else. Her father forwarded her what was probably an unreasonable amount of credits as a graduation gift, in lieu of attending the actual ceremony. His work, of course, kept him away, but he was proud of her accomplishments, he assured her in the brief accompanying message.

She bought herself some expensive shoes and while her classmates were going to dinner with their families, she went clubbing.

 

Kimball is clearing out the command center in the heart of the canyon, once the communications center for what used to be a mining operation. Most of the screens and consoles have gone dark, officers moving among the ones still lit to download and remove the Republic’s stored intel. Tucker’s aquamarine armor is among them, and at his side, the glowing blue hologram that is Epsilon.

Coming out of the lift on the lower level, Carolina does a double-take at a petite comm officer in her peripheral vision, dark brown accents on her tan armor. She pulls a data stick from the console and inserts another, doesn’t turn or notice Carolina’s sharp intake of breath or the way she pauses in the threshold before forcing herself to keep moving. She looks just to reassure herself that the young officer looks completely different—longer hair, darker complexion—but her heart still races. She still keeps one of CT’s dog tags tucked inside her armor. Wash has the other.

Vanessa Kimball materializes at the corner of her vision, armored but no helmet. Heavy-eyed, the blue tips of her hair lying messily askew. Carolina’s eyes focus on Kimball and the familiar gesture of her hand coming up to rub wearily across her forehead and push her hair carelessly to one side.

“Need a hand?” Carolina says, and Kimball’s brown eyes snap to her.

“Actually, yes. We could definitely use a hand down here.”

“Where do you want me?”

Kimball shrugs. “Honestly, just grab whatever you can. It’s all the small stuff at this point.”

“Done.”

Carolina gets to combing the outlying chambers of the command center methodically and clockwise, stripping any equipment not bolted down and bringing it into the central room for packing. Kimball’s staggeringly young Major General Marri, whom Carolina recognizes from the brilliant streak of gold decorating their thick black hair, collects the equipment from Carolina’s pile. Marri packs crates with a certain brutal efficiency, wasting not an inch of space, and Carolina pauses for a second to admire that handiwork. “You military before?”

Marri’s brow tightens and Carolina feels the misstep instantly. “Supply Corps for the colonization project,” Marri says coolly. “Back before the UNSC hung us out to dry. Any more questions?”

“No,” Carolina says shortly. “Sorry.”

 

Kimball returns, surveying Carolina’s work with arched eyebrows. “You’re fast. And… thorough. Did you remove those security monitors from 3B? How’d you—”

“Might come in handy,” Carolina says, shrugging. “You never know.”

Kimball shakes her head. “Well, color me impressed. Almost clear down here.” She nods to Marri, who is hauling crates to the lift. Perfect form, lifting from the knees, back straight. Biceps for years. Could’ve guessed Supply Corps without asking stupid questions.

She wonders just what Marri and the rest of the rebels think her relationship to the UNSC is, exactly. Hell, she’s not sure herself at this point. She’s back on the books as alive, all of them pardoned for whatever war crimes and petty charges they’d racked up over the years, but after Epsilon’s little speech to Hargrove, she supposes they could be slapped back to war criminals on a moment’s notice. Maybe they already have been.

It was so much less complicated, being dead.

But when these people look at her, they see Freelancer. UNSC. _Colorful Space Marines Stop Corruption!_ Tell _that_ to to the Marines, Carolina thinks ironically, hearing the echo of her mother’s voice somewhere deep in the back of her head. Glad Epsilon’s not in there right now. Not a conversation she wants to have.

“Should do my quarters,” Kimball says, eyes drifting down the short corridor that leads to the officers’ living space. “Get this place locked up.”

“You haven’t done your quarters yet?”

Kimball looks sheepish. “Haven’t even started. There’s been so much else to do…”

Carolina feels a smile tug at her lips. “You want me to get that started for you?”

“God, would you mind? I really should go topside to check on—”

“ _Done_ ,” Carolina says firmly, clapping Vanessa on the shoulder and giving her a gentle push toward the elevator. “I’ll take care of it.”

 

The starkness of Kimball’s little cell is softened by the half-stripped bunk, threadbare army linens in a haphazard pile and personal odds and ends here and there. Carolina supposes Kimball doesn’t have a lot of _things_ by civilian standards, but compared to what she’s used to, the amount of nonreg personal items scattered around the little room is disarming. Almost _precious_. She brushes her fingers over the cover of a blue-bound paper journal lying on the desk. Odd thing to have on base.

It occurs to her that she doesn’t know what Vanessa did before the civil war, or where she lived. She’s assumed Armonia but that might not be right. Plenty of the rebels are city kids but just as many, she’s learned, come from the outlying mining towns and rural areas.

Carolina opens Vanessa’s footlocker, a tan box with hand-painted blue accents and the initials VJK in small neat letters on top. J. Carolina lingers over that. Wonder what it’s for.

She empties the drawers. A few sets of civvies. That blue shirt Vanessa wore the night of the party. Some army fatigues Carolina hasn’t seen her wear. Tucked in the back corner of the top drawer, a not-quite-full package of latex dams, somewhat squashed, looking as though it hasn't been opened in a while. A small bottle of eyedrops. A menstrual cup. Carolina's quietly startled for a moment and then remembers—rebels. Right.

It was a shock the first time she got her period again, nearly three months AWOL from Freelancer when her birth control wore off. No mistaking those kind of cramps for anything else. Jesus. She swung by a clinic for a new prescription as quick as possible. Her periods were always miserable. Had been since she was a teenager.

Carolina reaches for a small figurine sitting on a shelf above the bunk but draws her hand back when she sees what it is. A Buddha figure. Huh.

She figures she’ll let Vanessa handle that one.

 

Everything else is packed, and Carolina is folding up the army blanket when Kimball returns. Vanessa surveys the bare room with a tired smile. “Thorough indeed. Thanks for the help, Carolina, really.”

Carolina nods to the shelf. “I didn’t touch that.”

Vanessa blinks, then nods, mouth quirking up in what looks suspiciously like amusement. She reaches up to remove the small brass figure, holding it carefully by the base. “It doesn’t bite, I promise. I appreciate the thought, though. You’re not religious, are you?”

Carolina sets down the folded blanket, watching as Vanessa opens her footlocker, searches for a moment, and comes out with a square of bright blue and white patterned cloth Carolina had assumed was a scarf. She wraps the figurine carefully in the fabric and tucks it somewhere deep among the rest of her things.

“Not really, no.”

Vanessa turns around, eyeing her quizzically. “Does it… make you uncomfortable?”

Carolina shrugs. “Don’t really know what to do with it.”

Vanessa makes a thoughtful noise and Carolina decides to change the subject. As quickly as possible. Yesterday, preferably. “How’s it going up top?”

“It’s… going,” Kimball says, the curious look dropping away from her face so fast Carolina almost regrets the question, because now she just looks exhausted. There’s a note of disbelief in her voice. “The last of us should be ready to roll out within the hour.”

She looks around the empty room, sits on the edge of her bunk, and covers her face with her hands.

Carolina lowers herself cautiously beside her. "You okay?”

Vanessa’s quiet for a long moment before she lets her hands fall into her lap.

"Tell me it's real," she says. "Tell me... tell me I'm not making a terrible mistake bringing them all back into the capital." She lets out a long, shaky sigh. "Last night I had a dream that we tore all this down and moved back, and the minute we were inside the city they surrounded us, took our supplies, and..."

Carolina inhales, searching for a reassurance that doesn’t sound hollow.

"I can't lead them wrong again," Vanessa says desperately. "I need to be sure this is the right decision. I need to know I'm keeping my people safe. I can't... I can't fail them again."

If somebody under Carolina’s command were talking like that she’d tell them to snap the hell out of it, that she needed them at their best. Remind them of their duty. Make her strength theirs. Be their leader. What Kimball needs is a friend, Carolina gets that. God, it shouldn’t be this _hard_. She tries to call up the night at the hospital, that strange easy feeling that settled over her with Vanessa in the waiting room in the dead hours of night. But fuck, that was mostly just… listening. When she needs to _say_ something...

“ _Do_ you think I’m making a mistake?” Vanessa asks quietly.

Fucking hell, she’s bad at this.

“I—think you’re doing the only thing you can,” Carolina says. It’s not great. Least it’s honest. “The hell are you supposed to do, keep living in a hole in the ground until you’re sure you can trust the Feds?”

Kimball snorts. “That’ll be the day.”

“Right,” Carolina says. “Exactly.”

Kimball’s shoulders straighten a little, and Carolina releases half a breath she didn’t quite realize she was holding. Okay. Landed that one all right.

“You’re right,” Kimball says. “You’re right. Thank you.”

Carolina exhales the rest of the way. “Y-eah. Don’t mention it.”

 

She heads upstairs with the excuse of checking in on Epsilon. Finds him still with Tucker, going over the temporary housing plans for their move to the city. They aren’t the best arrangements, but they give the rebel kids a roof over their head. Epsilon’s got a pretty good head for planning and it’s probably good for him being back with his friends sometimes. But if she doesn’t check in with him he gets really weird about it, and if there’s one thing she’s even less in the mood to deal with than Epsilon’s nosiness, it’s his abandonment issues.

“No, listen,” Tucker’s saying into his helmet radio, gesturing at the holo blueprint Epsilon’s projecting from his armor. “I’m telling you, we got more heads than beds. Tell Doyle his count’s off.”

The blueprint evaporates in midair, replaced by Epsilon’s helmeted blue form as Carolina approaches.

“You riding with me?” she asks, neutrally enough.

“Kinda in the middle of stuff here,” Epsilon says. “Go on without me. I’ll hitch a ride with Tucker.”

“Right, thanks, you’re welcome,” Tucker says, his tone slightly biting. Carolina wonders just how well the two of them have been getting along. “Sorry Wash, yeah, I’m still here. No, yeah. Just let Doyle know. We’ll figure it out.”

 

She walks with brisk steps to the garage, the mental reprieve for at least the rest of the day a welcome relief. Epsilon isn’t what you’d call an understanding headmate. She’s not even sure she’d call him a friend, exactly. An ally, certainly; his calculations are mostly good, he handles the armor mods and he does even make her laugh, on occasion.

(He’s nothing like the twins, their twisting, twining trajectories on perpetual chase through her neurons, sullen elusive Iota always sliding out of phase with anxious grasping Eta, their dissonance a screech that set her every nerve on edge and relented only when they caught one another for a brilliant instant. The burst of speed and force and focus they gave her in those moments was like nothing, _nothing_ she ever had and nothing she’ll ever have again. He holds the echo of them but he is nothing like them.)

 

They’ve reserved a hog for her in the garage. Jensen looks at her with a kind of reverence and stammers a little when she hands Carolina the keys. She’d say something to put the kid at ease but there’s too much in her head right now so she just says “Thanks” and slides into the driver’s seat.

The rumble of the engine spreads a familiar comfort through her limbs. Her knee’s sore under the armor, better than it has been but still not good after being on her feet all day. Carolina pulls slowly out of the garage, acutely aware of the tension of the pedal beneath her foot.

The length of the canyon spreads before her, buildings set into the rock along either side, the last few rebel soldiers clustered here and there, a couple of trucks. Far at the end, the stony unpaved road that slopes up out of the gorge at an alarming angle. The impulse comes to put her foot to the accelerator and drive off alone. She thinks of the long red sunsets of Chorus, the patchy green-brown plains, the strip-mined mountaintops blasted out and black, the Federal bases nestled high in the intact snowcaps. She thinks of the breadth of this planet and knows, as surely as she has known ever since that long icy fall, that she is bound to nowhere.

Even here, she could run.

Her heart rate is up, the HUD blithely reporting it for her next to the slightly accelerated rate of her breathing. She is under strict doc’s orders not to run her speed unit, but she knows how to trigger the autoinjector for a shot of the adrenaline cocktail that lets her move with the speed of her armor, turns her blood and bones and muscle to liquid speed and reflex, something beyond human. She doesn’t have to run to use that. She could do it right now, drive out of the canyon and floor the accelerator, scream off into the sunset with her blood howling in her ears. One shot wouldn’t kill her.

No, she won’t. But she can see the trajectory of it, laid out before her. She can feel the pull at the core of her, a whiteknuckle grip on the wheel and a tense grit in her jaw.

Carolina releases a long breath and unclenches her hands. She unseals her helmet and sets it on the passenger seat, then thinking better of that, picks it up and sets it in the back. After a quick glance in the rearview to flick her bangs into place, she turns the car around.

 

Her timing’s good. Kimball’s on her way out of the command center when she arrives. Too close in here for Carolina to safely pull off any kind of flashy stop, but she stomps the brake abruptly enough to kick up a little dust, and leans over the driver-side door with her hair hanging over one eye and puts on her sauciest smirk. “Hey, lady. Wanna go for a ride?”

Kimball stares for a very long moment and then bursts out laughing. “You know… I really never know what to expect from you.”

“Don’t try,” Carolina says wryly.

Vanessa eyes the empty seat. “Serious about the ride?”

“Get in,” Carolina says with a grin, swinging out of the vehicle to load Vanessa’s footlocker into the back.

 

Kimball’s helmet goes in the back next to Carolina’s, and damn if she doesn’t look good in the passenger seat, that gorgeous profile, slightly chapped lips and round nose and long brow and glossy blue-tipped black hair and those scars, another question Carolina hasn’t asked.

“I drive fast,” she warns as they rumble up the steep incline out of the canyon.

Vanessa laughs. “Now _that_ doesn’t surprise me.”

The wind on Carolina’s face feels good, whipping her hair back from her eyes. She glances over to see the way Vanessa’s face softens, the way the hard angles of her body relax into the seat as they roll onto flat, gravelly terrain. It’s a nice long ride to Armonia, miles of road stretched before them and Carolina feels it again, that pull, that long trajectory toward inevitability—but it’s her choice, she reminds herself. And Vanessa’s.

She puts more pressure on the accelerator, speeding up, but not too much. No racing to the finish line, this time. Not for this.


End file.
